Computer supported collaborative writing in an early learning classroom

This paper describes a collaborative experiment in an early learners’ classroom, equipped with special software and hardware to support the acquisition of initial reading and writing skills. This ‘Computer-integrated Classroom’ originated from the EU project NIMIS. Here, a new method to teach ‘reading through writing’ is supported by a specific software tool (T) in the general framework of the classroom environment. Particularly, a collaborative writing task facilitated by a shared workspace system has been evaluated with a group of first graders using the T application. The speciality of this experiment lies in the study of domain-specific collaboration in a rich real world learning setting.